CHAPTER II
He went wherever he was asked, on principle, partly to study
American society and partly because in Washington pastimes seemed to
him not so numerous that one could afford to neglect occasions. At
the end of two winters he had naturally had a good many of various
kinds--his study of American society had yielded considerable fruit.
When, however, in April, during the second year of his residence, he
presented himself at a large party given by Mrs. Bonnycastle and of
which it was believed that it would be the last serious affair of
the season, his being there (and still more his looking very fresh
and talkative) was not the consequence of a rule of conduct. He
went to Mrs. Bonnycastle's simply because he liked the lady, whose
receptions were the pleasantest in Washington, and because if he
didn't go there he didn't know what he should do; that absence of
alternatives having become familiar to him by the waters of the
Potomac. There were a great many things he did because if he didn't
do them he didn't know what he should do. It must be added that in
this case even if there had been an alternative he would still have
decided to go to Mrs. Bonnycastle's. If her house wasn't the
pleasantest there it was at least difficult to say which was
pleasanter; and the complaint sometimes made of it that it was too
limited, that it left out, on the whole, more people than it took
in, applied with much less force when it was thrown open for a
general party. Toward the end of the social year, in those soft
scented days of the Washington spring when the air began to show a
southern glow and the Squares and Circles (to which the wide empty
avenues converged according to a plan so ingenious, yet so
bewildering) to flush with pink blossom and to make one wish to sit
on benches--under this magic of expansion and condonation Mrs.
Bonnycastle, who during the winter had been a good deal on the
defensive, relaxed her vigilance a little, became whimsically
wilful, vernally reckless, as it were, and ceased to calculate the
consequences of an hospitality which a reference to the back files
or even to the morning's issue of the newspapers might easily prove
a mistake. But Washington life, to Count Otto's apprehension, was
paved with mistakes; he felt himself in a society founded on
fundamental fallacies and triumphant blunders. Little addicted as
he was to the sportive view of existence, he had said to himself at
an early stage of his sojourn that the only way to enjoy the great
Republic would be to burn one's standards and warm one's self at the
blaze. Such were the reflexions of a theoretic Teuton who now
walked for the most part amid the ashes of his prejudices.
Mrs. Bonnycastle had endeavoured more than once to explain to him
the principles on which she received certain people and ignored
certain others; but it was with difficulty that he entered into her
discriminations. American promiscuity, goodness knew, had been
strange to him, but it was nothing to the queerness of American
criticism. This lady would discourse to him a perte de vue on
differences where he only saw resemblances, and both the merits and
the defects of a good many members of Washington society, as this
society was interpreted to him by Mrs. Bonnycastle, he was often at
a loss to understand. Fortunately she had a fund of good humour
which, as I have intimated, was apt to come uppermost with the April
blossoms and which made the people she didn't invite to her house
almost as amusing to her as those she did. Her husband was not in
politics, though politics were much in him; but the couple had taken
upon themselves the responsibilities of an active patriotism; they
thought it right to live in America, differing therein from many of
their acquaintances who only, with some grimness, thought it
inevitable. They had that burdensome heritage of foreign
reminiscence with which so many Americans were saddled; but they
carried it more easily than most of their country-people, and one
knew they had lived in Europe only by their present exultation,
never in the least by their regrets. Their regrets, that is, were
only for their ever having lived there, as Mrs. Bonnycastle once
told the wife of a foreign minister. They solved all their problems
successfully, including those of knowing none of the people they
didn't wish to, and of finding plenty of occupation in a society
supposed to be meagrely provided with resources for that body which
Vogelstein was to hear invoked, again and again, with the mixture of
desire and of deprecation that might have attended the mention of a
secret vice, under the name of a leisure-class. When as the warm
weather approached they opened both the wings of their house-door,
it was because they thought it would entertain them and not because
they were conscious of a pressure. Alfred Bonnycastle all winter
indeed chafed a little at the definiteness of some of his wife's
reserves; it struck him that for Washington their society was really
a little too good. Vogelstein still remembered the puzzled feeling-
-it had cleared up somewhat now--with which, more than a year
before, he had heard Mr. Bonnycastle exclaim one evening, after a
dinner in his own house, when every guest but the German secretary
(who often sat late with the pair) had departed Hang it, there's
only a month left; let us be vulgar and have some fun--let us invite
the President."
This was Mrs. Bonnycastle's carnival, and on the occasion to which I
began my chapter by referring the President had not only been
invited but had signified his intention of being present. I hasten
to add that this was not the same august ruler to whom Alfred
Bonnycastle's irreverent allusion had been made. The White House
had received a new tenant--the old one was then just leaving it--and
Count Otto had had the advantage, during the first eighteen months
of his stay in America, of seeing an electoral campaign, a
presidential inauguration and a distribution of spoils. He had been
bewildered during those first weeks by finding that at the national
capital in the houses he supposed to be the best, the head of the
State was not a coveted guest; for this could be the only
explanation of Mr. Bonnycastle's whimsical suggestion of their
inviting him, as it were, in carnival. His successor went out a
good deal for a President.
The legislative session was over, but this made little difference in
the aspect of Mrs. Bonnycastle's rooms, which even at the height of
the congressional season could scarce be said to overflow with the
representatives of the people. They were garnished with an
occasional Senator, whose movements and utterances often appeared to
be regarded with a mixture of alarm and indulgence, as if they would
be disappointing if they weren't rather odd and yet might be
dangerous if not carefully watched. Our young man had come to
entertain a kindness for these conscript fathers of invisible
families, who had something of the toga in the voluminous folds of
their conversation, but were otherwise rather bare and bald, with
stony wrinkles in their faces, like busts and statues of ancient
law-givers. There seemed to him something chill and exposed in
their being at once so exalted and so naked; there were frequent
lonesome glances in their eyes, as if in the social world their
legislative consciousness longed for the warmth of a few comfortable
laws ready-made. Members of the House were very rare, and when
Washington was new to the inquiring secretary he used sometimes to
mistake them, in the halls and on the staircases where he met them,
for the functionaries engaged, under stress, to usher in guests and
wait at supper. It was only a little later that he perceived these
latter public characters almost always to be impressive and of that
rich racial hue which of itself served as a livery. At present,
however, such confounding figures were much less to be met than
during the months of winter, and indeed they were never frequent at
Mrs. Bonnycastle's. At present the social vistas of Washington,
like the vast fresh flatness of the lettered and numbered streets,
which at this season seemed to Vogelstein more spacious and vague
than ever, suggested but a paucity of political phenomena. Count
Otto that evening knew every one or almost every one. There were
often inquiring strangers, expecting great things, from New York and
Boston, and to them, in the friendly Washington way, the young
German was promptly introduced. It was a society in which
familiarity reigned and in which people were liable to meet three
times a day, so that their ultimate essence really became a matter
of importance.
"I've got three new girls," Mrs. Bonnycastle said. "You must talk
to them all."
"All at once?" Vogelstein asked, reversing in fancy a position not
at all unknown to him. He had so repeatedly heard himself addressed
in even more than triple simultaneity.
"Oh no; you must have something different for each; you can't get
off that way. Haven't you discovered that the American girl expects
something especially adapted to herself? It's very well for Europe
to have a few phrases that will do for any girl. The American girl
isn't ANY girl; she's a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species.
But you must keep the best this evening for Miss Day."
"For Miss Day!"--and Vogelstein had a stare of intelligence. "Do
you mean for Pandora?"
Mrs. Bonnycastle broke on her side into free amusement. "One would
think you had been looking for her over the globe! So you know her
already--and you call her by her pet name?"
"Oh no, I don't know her; that is I haven't seen her or thought of
her from that day to this. We came to America in the same ship."
"Isn't she an American then?"
"Oh yes; she lives at Utica--in the interior."
"In the interior of Utica? You can't mean my young woman then, who
lives in New York, where she's a great beauty and a great belle and
has been immensely admired this winter."
"After all," said Count Otto, considering and a little disappointed,
"the name's not so uncommon; it's perhaps another. But has she
rather strange eyes, a little yellow, but very pretty, and a nose a
little arched?"
"I can't tell you all that; I haven't seen her. She's staying with
Mrs. Steuben. She only came a day or two ago, and Mrs. Steuben's to
bring her. When she wrote to me to ask leave she told me what I
tell you. They haven't come yet."
Vogelstein felt a quick hope that the subject of this correspondence
might indeed be the young lady he had parted from on the dock at New
York, but the indications seemed to point another way, and he had no
wish to cherish an illusion. It didn't seem to him probable that
the energetic girl who had introduced him to Mr. Lansing would have
the entree of the best house in Washington; besides, Mrs.
Bonnycastle's guest was described as a beauty and belonging to the
brilliant city.
"What's the social position of Mrs. Steuben?" it occurred to him to
ask while he meditated. He had an earnest artless literal way of
putting such a question as that; you could see from it that he was
very thorough.
Mrs. Bonnycastle met it, however, but, with mocking laughter. "I'm
sure I don't know! What's your own?"--and she left him to turn to
her other guests, to several of whom she repeated his question.
Could they tell her what was the social position of Mrs. Steuben?
There was Count Vogelstein who wanted to know. He instantly became
aware of course that he oughtn't so to have expressed himself.
Wasn't the lady's place in the scale sufficiently indicated by Mrs.
Bonnycastle's acquaintance with her? Still there were fine degrees,
and he felt a little unduly snubbed. It was perfectly true, as he
told his hostess, that with the quick wave of new impressions that
had rolled over him after his arrival in America the image of
Pandora was almost completely effaced; he had seen innumerable
things that were quite as remarkable in their way as the heroine of
the Donau, but at the touch of the idea that he might see her and
hear her again at any moment she became as vivid in his mind as if
they had parted the day before: he remembered the exact shade of
the eyes he had described to Mrs. Bonnycastle as yellow, the tone of
her voice when at the last she expressed the hope he might judge
America correctly. HAD he judged America correctly? If he were to
meet her again she doubtless would try to ascertain. It would be
going much too far to say that the idea of such an ordeal was
terrible to Count Otto; but it may at least be said that the thought
of meeting Pandora Day made him nervous. The fact is certainly
singular, but I shall not take on myself to explain it; there are
some things that even the most philosophic historian isn't bound to
account for.
He wandered into another room, and there, at the end of five
minutes, he was introduced by Mrs. Bonnycastle to one of the young
ladies of whom she had spoken. This was a very intelligent girl who
came from Boston and showed much acquaintance with Spielhagen's
novels. "Do you like them?" Vogelstein asked rather vaguely, not
taking much interest in the matter, as he read works of fiction only
in case of a sea-voyage. The young lady from Boston looked pensive
and concentrated; then she answered that she liked SOME of them VERY
much, but that there were others she didn't like--and she enumerated
the works that came under each of these heads. Spielhagen is a
voluminous writer, and such a catalogue took some time; at the end
of it moreover Vogelstein's question was not answered, for he
couldn't have told us whether she liked Spielhagen or not.
On the next topic, however, there was no doubt about her feelings.
They talked about Washington as people talk only in the place
itself, revolving about the subject in widening and narrowing
circles, perching successively on its many branches, considering it
from every point of view. Our young man had been long enough in
America to discover that after half a century of social neglect
Washington had become the fashion and enjoyed the great advantage of
being a new resource in conversation. This was especially the case
in the months of spring, when the inhabitants of the commercial
cities came so far southward to escape, after the long winter, that
final affront. They were all agreed that Washington was
fascinating, and none of them were better prepared to talk it over
than the Bostonians. Vogelstein originally had been rather out of
step with them; he hadn't seized their point of view, hadn't known
with what they compared this object of their infatuation. But now
he knew everything; he had settled down to the pace; there wasn't a
possible phase of the discussion that could find him at a loss.
There was a kind of Hegelian element in it; in the light of these
considerations the American capital took on the semblance of a
monstrous mystical infinite Werden. But they fatigued Vogelstein a
little, and it was his preference, as a general thing, not to engage
the same evening with more than one newcomer, one visitor in the
freshness of initiation. This was why Mrs. Bonnycastle's expression
of a wish to introduce him to three young ladies had startled him a
little; he saw a certain process, in which he flattered himself that
he had become proficient, but which was after all tolerably
exhausting, repeated for each of the damsels. After separating from
his judicious Bostonian he rather evaded Mrs. Bonnycastle,
contenting himself with the conversation of old friends, pitched for
the most part in a lower and easier key.
At last he heard it mentioned that the President had arrived, had
been some half-hour in the house, and he went in search of the
illustrious guest, whose whereabouts at Washington parties was never
indicated by a cluster of courtiers. He made it a point, whenever
he found himself in company with the President, to pay him his
respects, and he had not been discouraged by the fact that there was
no association of ideas in the eye of the great man as he put out
his hand presidentially and said, "Happy to meet you, sir." Count
Otto felt himself taken for a mere loyal subject, possibly for an
office-seeker; and he used to reflect at such moments that the
monarchical form had its merits it provided a line of heredity for
the faculty of quick recognition. He had now some difficulty in
finding the chief magistrate, and ended by learning that he was in
the tea-room, a small apartment devoted to light refection near the
entrance of the house. Here our young man presently perceived him
seated on a sofa and in conversation with a lady. There were a
number of people about the table, eating, drinking, talking; and the
couple on the sofa, which was not near it but against the wall, in a
shallow recess, looked a little withdrawn, as if they had sought
seclusion and were disposed to profit by the diverted attention of
the others. The President leaned back; his gloved hands, resting on
either knee, made large white spots. He looked eminent, but he
looked relaxed, and the lady beside him ministered freely and
without scruple, it was clear, to this effect of his comfortably
unbending. Vogelstein caught her voice as he approached. He heard
her say "Well now, remember; I consider it a promise." She was
beautifully dressed, in rose-colour; her hands were clasped in her
lap and her eyes attached to the presidential profile.
"Well, madam, in that case it's about the fiftieth promise I've
given to-day."
It was just as he heard these words, uttered by her companion in
reply, that Count Otto checked himself, turned away and pretended to
be looking for a cup of tea. It wasn't usual to disturb the
President, even simply to shake hands, when he was sitting on a sofa
with a lady, and the young secretary felt it in this case less
possible than ever to break the rule, for the lady on the sofa was
none other than Pandora Day. He had recognised her without her
appearing to see him, and even with half an eye, as they said, had
taken in that she was now a person to be reckoned with. She had an
air of elation, of success; she shone, to intensity, in her rose-
coloured dress; she was extracting promises from the ruler of fifty
millions of people. What an odd place to meet her, her old shipmate
thought, and how little one could tell, after all, in America, who
people were! He didn't want to speak to her yet; he wanted to wait
a little and learn more; but meanwhile there was something
attractive in the fact that she was just behind him, a few yards
off, that if he should turn he might see her again. It was she Mrs.
Bonnycastle had meant, it was she who was so much admired in New
York. Her face was the same, yet he had made out in a moment that
she was vaguely prettier; he had recognised the arch of her nose,
which suggested a fine ambition. He took some tea, which he hadn't
desired, in order not to go away. He remembered her entourage on
the steamer; her father and mother, the silent senseless burghers,
so little "of the world," her infant sister, so much of it, her
humorous brother with his tall hat and his influence in the smoking-
room. He remembered Mrs. Dangerfield's warnings--yet her
perplexities too--and the letter from Mr. Bellamy, and the
introduction to Mr. Lansing, and the way Pandora had stooped down on
the dirty dock, laughing and talking, mistress of the situation, to
open her trunk for the Customs. He was pretty sure she had paid no
duties that day; this would naturally have been the purpose of Mr.
Bellamy's letter. Was she still in correspondence with that
gentleman, and had he got over the sickness interfering with their
reunion? These images and these questions coursed through Count
Otto's mind, and he saw it must be quite in Pandora's line to be
mistress of the situation, for there was evidently nothing on the
present occasion that could call itself her master. He drank his
tea and as; he put down his cup heard the President, behind him,
say: "Well, I guess my wife will wonder why I don't come home."
"Why didn't you bring her with you?" Pandora benevolently asked.
"Well, she doesn't go out much. Then she has got her sister staying
with her--Mrs. Runkle, from Natchez. She's a good deal of an
invalid, and my wife doesn't like to leave her."
"She must be a very kind woman"--and there was a high mature
competence in the way the girl sounded the note of approval.
"Well, I guess she isn't spoiled--yet."
"I should like very much to come and see her," said Pandora.
"Do come round. Couldn't you come some night?" the great man
responded.
"Well, I'll come some time. And I shall remind you of your
promise."
"All right. There's nothing like keeping it up. Well," said the
President, "I must bid good-bye to these bright folks."
Vogelstein heard him rise from the sofa with his companion; after
which he gave the pair time to pass out of the room before him.
They did it with a certain impressive deliberation, people making
way for the ruler of fifty millions and looking with a certain
curiosity at the striking pink person at his side. When a little
later he followed them across the hall, into one of the other rooms,
he saw the host and hostess accompany the President to the door and
two foreign ministers and a judge of the Supreme Court address
themselves to Pandora Day. He resisted the impulse to join this
circle: if he should speak to her at all he would somehow wish it
to be in more privacy. She continued nevertheless to occupy him,
and when Mrs. Bonnycastle came back from the hall he immediately
approached her with an appeal. "I wish you'd tell me something more
about that girl--that one opposite and in pink."
"The lovely Day--that's what they call her, I believe? I wanted you
to talk with her."
"I find she is the one I've met. But she seems to be so different
here. I can't make it out," said Count Otto.
There was something in his expression that again moved Mrs.
Bonnycastle to mirth. "How we do puzzle you Europeans! You look
quite bewildered."
"I'm sorry I look so--I try to hide it. But of course we're very
simple. Let me ask then a simple earnest childlike question. Are
her parents also in society?"
"Parents in society? D'ou tombez-vous? Did you ever hear of the
parents of a triumphant girl in rose-colour, with a nose all her
own, in society?"
"Is she then all alone?" he went on with a strain of melancholy in
his voice.
Mrs. Bonnycastle launched at him all her laughter.
"You're too pathetic. Don't you know what she is? I supposed of
course you knew."
"It's exactly what I'm asking you."
"Why she's the new type. It has only come up lately. They have had
articles about it in the papers. That's the reason I told Mrs.
Steuben to bring her."
"The new type? WHAT new type, Mrs. Bonnycastle?" he returned
pleadingly--so conscious was he that all types in America were new.
Her laughter checked her reply a moment, and by the time she had
recovered herself the young lady from Boston, with whom Vogelstein
had been talking, stood there to take leave. This, for an American
type, was an old one, he was sure; and the process of parting
between the guest and her hostess had an ancient elaboration. Count
Otto waited a little; then he turned away and walked up to Pandora
Day, whose group of interlocutors had now been re-enforced by a
gentleman who had held an important place in the cabinet of the late
occupant of the presidential chair. He had asked Mrs. Bonnycastle
if she were "all alone"; but there was nothing in her present
situation to show her for solitary. She wasn't sufficiently alone
for our friend's taste; but he was impatient and he hoped she'd give
him a few words to himself. She recognised him without a moment's
hesitation and with the sweetest smile, a smile matching to a shade
the tone in which she said: "I was watching you. I wondered if you
weren't going to speak to me."
"Miss Day was watching him!" one of the foreign ministers exclaimed;
"and we flattered ourselves that her attention was all with us."
"I mean before," said the girl, "while I was talking with the
President."
At which the gentlemen began to laugh, one of them remarking that
this was the way the absent were sacrificed, even the great; while
another put on record that he hoped Vogelstein was duly flattered.
"Oh I was watching the President too," said Pandora. "I've got to
watch HIM. He has promised me something."
"It must be the mission to England," the judge of the Supreme Court
suggested. "A good position for a lady; they've got a lady at the
head over there."
"I wish they would send you to my country," one of the foreign
ministers suggested. "I'd immediately get recalled."
"Why perhaps in your country I wouldn't speak to you! It's only
because you're here," the ex-heroine of the Donau returned with a
gay familiarity which evidently ranked with her but as one of the
arts of defence. "You'll see what mission it is when it comes out.
But I'll speak to Count Vogelstein anywhere," she went on. "He's an
older friend than any right here. I've known him in difficult
days."
"Oh yes, on the great ocean," the young man smiled. "On the watery
waste, in the tempest!"
"Oh I don't mean that so much; we had a beautiful voyage and there
wasn't any tempest. I mean when I was living in Utica. That's a
watery waste if you like, and a tempest there would have been a
pleasant variety."
"Your parents seemed to me so peaceful!" her associate in the other
memories sighed with a vague wish to say something sympathetic.
"Oh you haven't seen them ashore! At Utica they were very lively.
But that's no longer our natural home. Don't you remember I told
you I was working for New York? Well, I worked--l had to work hard.
But we've moved."
Count Otto clung to his interest. "And I hope they're happy."
"My father and mother? Oh they will be, in time. I must give them
time. They're very young yet, they've years before them. And
you've been always in Washington?" Pandora continued. "I suppose
you've found out everything about everything."
"Oh no--there are some things I CAN'T find out."
"Come and see me and perhaps I can help you. I'm very different
from what I was in that phase. I've advanced a great deal since
then."
"Oh how was Miss Day in that phase?" asked a cabinet minister of the
last administration.
"She was delightful of course," Count Otto said.
"He's very flattering; I didn't open my mouth!" Pandora cried.
"Here comes Mrs. Steuben to take me to some other place. I believe
it's a literary party near the Capitol. Everything seems so
separate in Washington. Mrs. Steuben's going to read a poem. I
wish she'd read it here; wouldn't it do as well?"
This lady, arriving, signified to her young friend the necessity of
their moving on. But Miss Day's companions had various things to
say to her before giving her up. She had a vivid answer for each,
and it was brought home to Vogelstein while he listened that this
would be indeed, in her development, as she said, another phase.
Daughter of small burghers as she might be she was really brilliant.
He turned away a little and while Mrs. Steuben waited put her a
question. He had made her half an hour before the subject of that
inquiry to which Mrs. Bonnycastle returned so ambiguous an answer;
but this wasn't because he failed of all direct acquaintance with
the amiable woman or of any general idea of the esteem in which she
was held. He had met her in various places and had been at her
house. She was the widow of a commodore, was a handsome mild soft
swaying person, whom every one liked, with glossy bands of black
hair and a little ringlet depending behind each ear. Some one had
said that she looked like the vieux jeu, idea of the queen in
Hamlet. She had written verses which were admired in the South,
wore a full-length portrait of the commodore on her bosom and spoke
with the accent of Savannah. She had about her a positive strong
odour of Washington. It had certainly been very superfluous in our
young man to question Mrs. Bonnycastle about her social position.
"Do kindly tell me," he said, lowering his voice, "what's the type
to which that young lady belongs? Mrs. Bonnycastle tells me it's a
new one."
Mrs. Steuben for a moment fixed her liquid eyes on the secretary of
legation. She always seemed to be translating the prose of your
speech into the finer rhythms with which her own mind was familiar.
"Do you think anything's really new?" she then began to flute. "I'm
very fond of the old; you know that's a weakness of we Southerners."
The poor lady, it will be observed, had another weakness as well.
"What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel
form. Were there not remarkable natures in the past? If you doubt
it you should visit the South, where the past still lingers."
Vogelstein had been struck before this with Mrs. Steuben's
pronunciation of the word by which her native latitudes were
designated; transcribing it from her lips you would have written it
(as the nearest approach) the Sooth. But at present he scarce
heeded this peculiarity; he was wondering rather how a woman could
be at once so copious and so uninforming. What did he care about
the past or even about the Sooth? He was afraid of starting her
again. He looked at her, discouraged and helpless, as bewildered
almost as Mrs. Bonnycastle had found him half an hour before; looked
also at the commodore, who, on her bosom, seemed to breathe again
with his widow's respirations. "Call it an old type then if you
like," he said in a moment. "All I want to know is what type it IS!
It seems impossible," he gasped, "to find out."
"You can find out in the newspapers. They've had articles about it.
They write about everything now. But it isn't true about Miss Day.
It's one of the first families. Her great-grandfather was in the
Revolution." Pandora by this time had given her attention again to
Mrs. Steuben. She seemed to signify that she was ready to move on.
"Wasn't your great-grandfather in the Revolution?" the elder lady
asked. "I'm telling Count Vogelstein about him."
"Why are you asking about my ancestors?" the girl demanded of the
young German with untempered brightness. "Is that the thing you
said just now that you can't find out? Well, if Mrs. Steuben will
only be quiet you never will."
Mrs. Steuben shook her head rather dreamily. "Well, it's no trouble
for we of the Sooth to be quiet. There's a kind of languor in our
blood. Besides, we have to be to-day. But I've got to show some
energy to-night. I've got to get you to the end of Pennsylvania
Avenue."
Pandora gave her hand to Count Otto and asked him if he thought they
should meet again. He answered that in Washington people were
always meeting again and that at any rate he shouldn't fail to wait
upon her. Hereupon, just as the two ladies were detaching
themselves, Mrs. Steuben remarked that if the Count and Miss Day
wished to meet again the picnic would be a good chance--the picnic
she was getting up for the following Thursday. It was to consist of
about twenty bright people, and they'd go down the Potomac to Mount
Vernon. The Count answered that if Mrs. Steuben thought him bright
enough he should be delighted to join the party; and he was told the
hour for which the tryst was taken.
He remained at Mrs. Bonnycastle's after every one had gone, and then
he informed this lady of his reason for waiting. Would she have
mercy on him and let him know, in a single word, before he went to
rest--for without it rest would be impossible--what was this famous
type to which Pandora Day belonged?
"Gracious, you don't mean to say you've not found out that type
yet!" Mrs. Bonnycastle exclaimed with a return of her hilarity.
"What have you been doing all the evening? You Germans may be
thorough, but you certainly are not quick!"
It was Alfred Bonnycastle who at last took pity on him. "My dear
Vogelstein, she's the latest freshest fruit of our great American
evolution. She's the self-made girl!"
Count Otto gazed a moment. "The fruit of the great American
Revolution? Yes, Mrs. Steuben told me her great-grandfather--" but
the rest of his sentence was lost in a renewed explosion of Mrs.
Bonnycastle's sense of the ridiculous. He bravely pushed his
advantage, such as it was, however, and, desiring his host's
definition to be defined, inquired what the self-made girl might be.
"Sit down and we'll tell you all about it," Mrs. Bonnycastle said.
"I like talking this way, after a party's over. You can smoke if
you like, and Alfred will open another window. Well, to begin with,
the self-made girl's a new feature. That, however, you know. In
the second place she isn't self-made at all. We all help to make
her--we take such an interest in her."
"That's only after she's made!" Alfred Bonnycastle broke in. "But
it's Vogelstein that takes an interest. What on earth has started
you up so on the subject of Miss Day?"
The visitor explained as well as he could that it was merely the
accident of his having crossed the ocean in the steamer with her;
but he felt the inadequacy of this account of the matter, felt it
more than his hosts, who could know neither how little actual
contact he had had with her on the ship, how much he had been
affected by Mrs. Dangerfield's warnings, nor how much observation at
the same time he had lavished on her. He sat there half an hour,
and the warm dead stillness of the Washington night--nowhere are the
nights so silent--came in at the open window, mingled with a soft
sweet earthy smell, the smell of growing things and in particular,
as he thought, of Mrs. Steuben's Sooth. Before he went away he had
heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the
picture that strongly impressed him. She was possible doubtless
only in America; American life had smoothed the way for her. She
was not fast, nor emancipated, nor crude, nor loud, and there wasn't
in her, of necessity at least, a grain of the stuff of which the
adventuress is made. She was simply very successful, and her
success was entirely personal. She hadn't been born with the silver
spoon of social opportunity; she had grasped it by honest exertion.
You knew her by many different signs, but chiefly, infallibly, by
the appearance of her parents. It was her parents who told her
story; you always saw how little her parents could have made her.
Her attitude with regard to them might vary in different ways. As
the great fact on her own side was that she had lifted herself from
a lower social plane, done it all herself, and done it by the simple
lever of her personality, it was naturally to be expected that she
would leave the authors of her mere material being in the shade.
Sometimes she had them in her wake, lost in the bubbles and the foam
that showed where she had passed; sometimes, as Alfred Bonnycastle
said, she let them slide altogether; sometimes she kept them in
close confinement, resorting to them under cover of night and with
every precaution; sometimes she exhibited them to the public in
discreet glimpses, in prearranged attitudes. But the general
characteristic of the self-made girl was that, though it was
frequently understood that she was privately devoted to her kindred,
she never attempted to impose them on society, and it was striking
that, though in some of her manifestations a bore, she was at her
worst less of a bore than they. They were almost always solemn and
portentous, and they were for the most part of a deathly
respectability. She wasn't necessarily snobbish, unless it was
snobbish to want the best. She didn't cringe, she didn't make
herself smaller than she was; she took on the contrary a stand of
her own and attracted things to herself. Naturally she was possible
only in America--only in a country where whole ranges of competition
and comparison were absent. The natural history of this interesting
creature was at last completely laid bare to the earnest stranger,
who, as he sat there in the animated stillness, with the fragrant
breath of the Western world in his nostrils, was convinced of what
he had already suspected, that conversation in the great Republic
was more yearningly, not to say gropingly, psychological than
elsewhere. Another thing, as he learned, that you knew the self-
made girl by was her culture, which was perhaps a little too
restless and obvious. She had usually got into society more or less
by reading, and her conversation was apt to be garnished with
literary allusions, even with familiar quotations. Vogelstein
hadn't had time to observe this element as a developed form in
Pandora Day; but Alfred Bonnycastle hinted that he wouldn't trust
her to keep it under in a tete-a-tete. It was needless to say that
these young persons had always been to Europe; that was usually the
first place they got to. By such arts they sometimes entered
society on the other side before they did so at home; it was to be
added at the same time that this resource was less and less
valuable, for Europe, in the American world, had less and less
prestige and people in the Western hemisphere now kept a watch on
that roundabout road. All of which quite applied to Pandora Day--
the journey to Europe, the culture (as exemplified in the books she
read on the ship), the relegation, the effacement, of the family.
The only thing that was exceptional was the rapidity of her march;
for the jump she had taken since he left her in the hands of Mr.
Lansing struck Vogelstein, even after he had made all allowance for
the abnormal homogeneity of the American mass, as really
considerable. It took all her cleverness to account for such
things. When she "moved" from Utica--mobilised her commissariat--
the battle appeared virtually to have been gained.
Count Otto called the next day, and Mrs. Steuben's blackamoor
informed him, in the communicative manner of his race, that the
ladies had gone out to pay some visits and look at the Capitol.
Pandora apparently had not hitherto examined this monument, and our
young man wished he had known, the evening before, of her omission,
so that he might have offered to be her initiator. There is too
obvious a connexion for us to fail of catching it between his regret
and the fact that in leaving Mrs. Steuben's door he reminded himself
that he wanted a good walk, and that he thereupon took his way along
Pennsylvania Avenue. His walk had become fairly good by the time he
reached the great white edifice that unfolds its repeated colonnades
and uplifts its isolated dome at the end of a long vista of saloons
and tobacco-shops. He slowly climbed the great steps, hesitating a
little, even wondering why he had come. The superficial reason was
obvious enough, but there was a real one behind it that struck him
as rather wanting in the solidity which should characterise the
motives of an emissary of Prince Bismarck. The superficial reason
was a belief that Mrs. Steuben would pay her visit first--it was
probably only a question of leaving cards--and bring her young
friend to the Capitol at the hour when the yellow afternoon light
would give a tone to the blankness of its marble walls. The Capitol
was a splendid building, but it was rather wanting in tone.
Vogelstein's curiosity about Pandora Day had been much more
quickened than checked by the revelations made to him in Mrs.
Bonnycastle's drawing-room. It was a relief to have the creature
classified; but he had a desire, of which he had not been conscious
before, to see really to the end how well, in other words how
completely and artistically, a girl could make herself. His
calculations had been just, and he had wandered about the rotunda
for only ten minutes, looking again at the paintings, commemorative
of the national annals, which occupy its lower spaces, and at the
simulated sculptures, so touchingly characteristic of early American
taste, which adorn its upper reaches, when the charming women he had
been counting on presented themselves in charge of a licensed guide.
He went to meet them and didn't conceal from them that he had marked
them for his very own. The encounter was happy on both sides, and
he accompanied them through the queer and endless interior, through
labyrinths of bleak bare development, into legislative and judicial
halls. He thought it a hideous place; he had seen it all before and
asked himself what senseless game he was playing. In the lower
House were certain bedaubed walls, in the basest style of imitation,
which made him feel faintly sick, not to speak of a lobby adorned
with artless prints and photographs of eminent defunct Congressmen
that was all too serious for a joke and too comic for a Valhalla.
But Pandora was greatly interested; she thought the Capitol very
fine; it was easy to criticise the details, but as a whole it was
the most impressive building she had ever seen. She proved a
charming fellow tourist; she had constantly something to say, but
never said it too much; it was impossible to drag in the wake of a
cicerone less of a lengthening or an irritating chain. Vogelstein
could see too that she wished to improve her mind; she looked at the
historical pictures, at the uncanny statues of local worthies,
presented by the different States--they were of different sizes, as
if they had been "numbered," in a shop--she asked questions of the
guide and in the chamber of the Senate requested him to show her the
chairs of the gentlemen from New York. She sat down in one of them,
though Mrs. Steuben told her THAT Senator (she mistook the chair,
dropping into another State) was a horrid old thing.
Throughout the hour he spent with her Vogelstein seemed to see how
it was she had made herself. They walked about, afterwards on the
splendid terrace that surrounds the Capitol, the great marble floor
on which it stands, and made vague remarks--Pandora's were the most
definite--about the yellow sheen of the Potomac, the hazy hills of
Virginia, the far-gleaming pediment of Arlington, the raw confused-
looking country. Washington was beneath them, bristling and
geometrical; the long lines of its avenues seemed to stretch into
national futures. Pandora asked Count Otto if he had ever been to
Athens and, on his admitting so much, sought to know whether the
eminence on which they stood didn't give him an idea of the
Acropolis in its prime. Vogelstein deferred the satisfaction of
this appeal to their next meeting; he was glad--in spite of the
appeal--to make pretexts for seeing her again. He did so on the
morrow; Mrs. Steuben's picnic was still three days distant. He
called on Pandora a second time, also met her each evening in the
Washington world. It took very little of this to remind him that he
was forgetting both Mrs. Dangerfield's warnings and the admonitions-
-long familiar to him--of his own conscience. Was he in peril of
love? Was he to be sacrificed on the altar of the American girl, an
altar at which those other poor fellows had poured out some of the
bluest blood in Germany and he had himself taken oath he would never
seriously worship? He decided that he wasn't in real danger, that
he had rather clinched his precautions. It was true that a young
person who had succeeded so well for herself might be a great help
to her husband; but this diplomatic aspirant preferred on the whole
that his success should be his own: it wouldn't please him to have
the air of being pushed by his wife. Such a wife as that would wish
to push him, and he could hardly admit to himself that this was what
fate had in reserve for him--to be propelled in his career by a
young lady who would perhaps attempt to talk to the Kaiser as he had
heard her the other night talk to the President. Would she consent
to discontinue relations with her family, or would she wish still to
borrow plastic relief from that domestic background? That her
family was so impossible was to a certain extent an advantage; for
if they had been a little better the question of a rupture would be
less easy. He turned over these questions in spite of his security,
or perhaps indeed because of it. The security made them speculative
and disinterested.
They haunted him during the excursion to Mount Vernon, which took
place according to traditions long established. Mrs. Steuben's
confederates assembled on the steamer and were set afloat on the big
brown stream which had already seemed to our special traveller to
have too much bosom and too little bank. Here and there, however,
he became conscious of a shore where there was something to look at,
even though conscious at the same time that he had of old lost great
opportunities of an idyllic cast in not having managed to be more
"thrown with" a certain young lady on the deck of the North German
Lloyd. The two turned round together to hang over Alexandria, which
for Pandora, as she declared, was a picture of Old Virginia. She
told Vogelstein that she was always hearing about it during the
Civil War, ages before. Little girl as she had been at the time she
remembered all the names that were on people's lips during those
years of reiteration. This historic spot had a touch of the romance
of rich decay, a reference to older things, to a dramatic past. The
past of Alexandria appeared in the vista of three or four short
streets sloping up a hill and lined with poor brick warehouses
erected for merchandise that had ceased to come or go. It looked
hot and blank and sleepy, down to the shabby waterside where
tattered darkies dangled their bare feet from the edge of rotting
wharves. Pandora was even more interested in Mount Vernon--when at
last its wooded bluff began to command the river--than she had been
in the Capitol, and after they had disembarked and ascended to the
celebrated mansion she insisted on going into every room it
contained. She "claimed for it," as she said--some of her turns
were so characteristic both of her nationality and her own style--
the finest situation in the world, and was distinct as to the shame
of their not giving it to the President for his country-seat. Most
of her companions had seen the house often, and were now coupling
themselves in the grounds according to their sympathies, so that it
was easy for Vogelstein to offer the benefit of his own experience
to the most inquisitive member of the party. They were not to lunch
for another hour, and in the interval the young man roamed with his
first and fairest acquaintance. The breath of the Potomac, on the
boat, had been a little harsh, but on the softly-curving lawn,
beneath the clustered trees, with the river relegated to a mere
shining presence far below and in the distance, the day gave out
nothing but its mildness, the whole scene became noble and genial.
Count Otto could joke a little on great occasions, and the present
one was worthy of his humour. He maintained to his companion that
the shallow painted mansion resembled a false house, a "wing" or
structure of daubed canvas, on the stage; but she answered him so
well with certain economical palaces she had seen in Germany, where,
as she said, there was nothing but china stoves and stuffed birds,
that he was obliged to allow the home of Washington to be after all
really gemuthlich. What he found so in fact was the soft texture of
the day, his personal situation, the sweetness of his suspense. For
suspense had decidedly become his portion; he was under a charm that
made him feel he was watching his own life and that his
susceptibilities were beyond his control. It hung over him that
things might take a turn, from one hour to the other, which would
make them very different from what they had been yet; and his heart
certainly beat a little faster as he wondered what that turn might
be. Why did he come to picnics on fragrant April days with American
girls who might lead him too far? Wouldn't such girls be glad to
marry a Pomeranian count? And WOULD they, after all, talk that way
to the Kaiser? If he were to marry one of them he should have to
give her several thorough lessons.
In their little tour of the house our young friend and his companion
had had a great many fellow visitors, who had also arrived by the
steamer and who had hitherto not left them an ideal privacy. But
the others gradually dispersed; they circled about a kind of showman
who was the authorised guide, a big slow genial vulgar heavily-
bearded man, with a whimsical edifying patronising tone, a tone that
had immense success when he stopped here and there to make his
points--to pass his eyes over his listening flock, then fix them
quite above it with a meditative look and bring out some ancient
pleasantry as if it were a sudden inspiration. He made a cheerful
thing, an echo of the platform before the booth of a country fair,
even of a visit to the tomb of the pater patriae. It is enshrined
in a kind of grotto in the grounds, and Vogelstein remarked to
Pandora that he was a good man for the place, but was too familiar.
"Oh he'd have been familiar with Washington," said the girl with the
bright dryness with which she often uttered amusing things.
Vogelstein looked at her a moment, and it came over him, as he
smiled, that she herself probably wouldn't have been abashed even by
the hero with whom history has taken fewest liberties. "You look as
if you could hardly believe that," Pandora went on. "You Germans
are always in such awe of great people." And it occurred to her
critic that perhaps after all Washington would have liked her
manner, which was wonderfully fresh and natural. The man with the
beard was an ideal minister to American shrines; he played on the
curiosity of his little band with the touch of a master, drawing
them at the right moment away to see the classic ice-house where the
old lady had been found weeping in the belief it was Washington's
grave. While this monument was under inspection our interesting
couple had the house to themselves, and they spent some time on a
pretty terrace where certain windows of the second floor opened--a
little rootless verandah which overhung, in a manner, obliquely, all
the magnificence of the view; the immense sweep of the river, the
artistic plantations, the last-century garden with its big box
hedges and remains of old espaliers. They lingered here for nearly
half an hour, and it was in this retirement that Vogelstein enjoyed
the only approach to intimate conversation appointed for him, as was
to appear, with a young woman in whom he had been unable to persuade
himself that he was not absorbed. It's not necessary, and it's not
possible, that I should reproduce this colloquy; but I may mention
that it began--as they leaned against the parapet of the terrace and
heard the cheerful voice of the showman wafted up to them from a
distance--with his saying to her rather abruptly that he couldn't
make out why they hadn't had more talk together when they crossed
the Atlantic.
"Well, I can if you can't," said Pandora. "I'd have talked quick
enough if you had spoken to me. I spoke to you first."
"Yes, I remember that"--and it affected him awkwardly.
"You listened too much to Mrs. Dangerfield."
He feigned a vagueness. "To Mrs. Dangerfield?"
"That woman you were always sitting with; she told you not to speak
to me. I've seen her in New York; she speaks to me now herself.
She recommended you to have nothing to do with me."
"Oh how can you say such dreadful things?" Count Otto cried with a
very becoming blush.
"You know you can't deny it. You weren't attracted by my family.
They're charming people when you know them. I don't have a better
time anywhere than I have at home," the girl went on loyally. "But
what does it matter? My family are very happy. They're getting
quite used to New York. Mrs. Dangerfield's a vulgar wretch--next
winter she'll call on me."
"You are unlike any Madchen I've ever seen--I don't understand you,"
said poor Vogelstein with the colour still in his face.
"Well, you never WILL understand me--probably; but what difference
does it make?"
He attempted to tell her what difference, but I've no space to
follow him here. It's known that when the German mind attempts to
explain things it doesn't always reduce them to simplicity, and
Pandora was first mystified, then amused, by some of the Count's
revelations. At last I think she was a little frightened, for she
remarked irrelevantly, with some decision, that luncheon would be
ready and that they ought to join Mrs. Steuben. Her companion
walked slowly, on purpose, as they left the house together, for he
knew the pang of a vague sense that he was losing her.
"And shall you be in Washington many days yet?" he appealed as they
went.
"It will all depend. I'm expecting important news. What I shall do
will be influenced by that."
The way she talked about expecting news--and important!--made him
feel somehow that she had a career, that she was active and
independent, so that he could scarcely hope to stop her as she
passed. It was certainly true that he had never seen any girl like
her. It would have occurred to him that the news she was expecting
might have reference to the favour she had begged of the President,
if he hadn't already made up his mind--in the calm of meditation
after that talk with the Bonnycastles--that this favour must be a
pleasantry. What she had said to him had a discouraging, a somewhat
chilling effect; nevertheless it was not without a certain ardour
that he inquired of her whether, so long as she stayed in
Washington, he mightn't pay her certain respectful attentions.
"As many as you like--and as respectful ones; but you won't keep
them up for ever!"
"You try to torment me," said Count Otto.
She waited to explain. "I mean that I may have some of my family."
"I shall be delighted to see them again."
Again she just hung fire. "There are some you've never seen."
In the afternoon, returning to Washington on the steamer, Vogelstein
received a warning. It came from Mrs. Bonnycastle and constituted,
oddly enough, the second juncture at which an officious female
friend had, while sociably afloat with him, advised him on the
subject of Pandora Day.
"There's one thing we forgot to tell you the other night about the
self-made girl," said the lady of infinite mirth. "It's never safe
to fix your affections on her, because she has almost always an
impediment somewhere in the background."
He looked at her askance, but smiled and said: "I should understand
your information--for which I'm so much obliged--a little better if
I knew what you mean by an impediment."
"Oh I mean she's always engaged to some young man who belongs to her
earlier phase."
"Her earlier phase?"
"The time before she had made herself--when she lived unconscious of
her powers. A young man from Utica, say. They usually have to
wait; he's probably in a store. It's a long engagement."
Count Otto somehow preferred to understand as little as possible.
"Do you mean a betrothal--to take effect?"
"I don't mean anything German and moonstruck. I mean that piece of
peculiarly American enterprise a premature engagement--to take
effect, but too complacently, at the end of time."
Vogelstein very properly reflected that it was no use his having
entered the diplomatic career if he weren't able to bear himself as
if this interesting generalisation had no particular message for
him. He did Mrs. Bonnycastle moreover the justice to believe that
she wouldn't have approached the question with such levity if she
had supposed she should make him wince. The whole thing was, like
everything else, but for her to laugh at, and the betrayal moreover
of a good intention. "I see, I see--the self-made girl has of
course always had a past. Yes, and the young man in the store--from
Utica--is part of her past."
"You express it perfectly," said Mrs. Bonnycastle. "I couldn't say
it better myself."
"But with her present, with her future, when they change like this
young lady's, I suppose everything else changes. How do you say it
in America? She lets him slide."
"We don't say it at all!" Mrs. Bonnycastle cried. "She does nothing
of the sort; for what do you take her? She sticks to him; that at
least is what we EXPECT her to do," she added with less assurance.
"As I tell you, the type's new and the case under consideration. We
haven't yet had time for complete study."
"Oh of course I hope she sticks to him," Vogelstein declared simply
and with his German accent more audible, as it always was when he
was slightly agitated.
For the rest of the trip he was rather restless. He wandered about
the boat, talking little with the returning picnickers. Toward the
last, as they drew near Washington and the white dome of the Capitol
hung aloft before them, looking as simple as a suspended snowball,
he found himself, on the deck, in proximity to Mrs. Steuben. He
reproached himself with having rather neglected her during an
entertainment for which he was indebted to her bounty, and he sought
to repair his omission by a proper deference. But the only act of
homage that occurred to him was to ask her as by chance whether Miss
Day were, to her knowledge, engaged.
Mrs. Steuben turned her Southern eyes upon him with a look of almost
romantic compassion. "To my knowledge? Why of course I'd know! I
should think you'd know too. Didn't you know she was engaged? Why
she has been engaged since she was sixteen."
Count Otto gazed at the dome of the Capitol. "To a gentleman from
Utica?
"Yes, a native of her place. She's expecting him soon."
"I'm so very glad to hear it," said Vogelstein, who decidedly, for
his career, had promise. "And is she going to marry him?"
"Why what do people fall in love with each other FOR? I presume
they'll marry when she gets round to it. Ah if she had only been
from the Sooth--!"
At this he broke quickly in: "But why have they never brought it
off, as you say, in so many years?"
"Well, at first she was too young, and then she thought her family
ought to see Europe--of course they could see it better WITH her--
and they spent some time there. And then Mr. Bellamy had some
business difficulties that made him feel as if he didn't want to
marry just then. But he has given up business and I presume feels
more free. Of course it's rather long, but all the while they've
been engaged. It's a true, true love," said Mrs. Steuben, whose
sound of the adjective was that of a feeble flute.
"Is his name Mr. Bellamy?" the Count asked with his haunting
reminiscence. "D. F. Bellamy, so? And has he been in a store?"
"I don't know what kind of business it was: it was some kind of
business in Utica. I think he had a branch in New York. He's one
of the leading gentlemen of Utica and very highly educated. He's a
good deal older than Miss Day. He's a very fine man--I presume a
college man. He stands very high in Utica. I don't know why you
look as if you doubted it."
Vogelstein assured Mrs. Steuben that he doubted nothing, and indeed
what she told him was probably the more credible for seeming to him
eminently strange. Bellamy had been the name of the gentleman who,
a year and a half before, was to have met Pandora on the arrival of
the German steamer; it was in Bellamy's name that she had addressed
herself with such effusion to Bellamy's friend, the man in the straw
hat who was about to fumble in her mother's old clothes. This was a
fact that seemed to Count Otto to finish the picture of her
contradictions; it wanted at present no touch to be complete. Yet
even as it hung there before him it continued to fascinate him, and
he stared at it, detached from surrounding things and feeling a
little as if he had been pitched out of an overturned vehicle, till
the boat bumped against one of the outstanding piles of the wharf at
which Mrs. Steuben's party was to disembark. There was some delay
in getting the steamer adjusted to the dock, during which the
passengers watched the process over its side and extracted what
entertainment they might from the appearance of the various persons
collected to receive it. There were darkies and loafers and
hackmen, and also vague individuals, the loosest and blankest he had
ever seen anywhere, with tufts on their chins, toothpicks in their
mouths, hands in their pockets, rumination in their jaws and diamond
pins in their shirt-fronts, who looked as if they had sauntered over
from Pennsylvania Avenue to while away half an hour, forsaking for
that interval their various slanting postures in the porticoes of
the hotels and the doorways of the saloons.
"Oh I'm so glad! How sweet of you to come down!" It was a voice
close to Count Otto's shoulder that spoke these words, and he had no
need to turn to see from whom it proceeded. It had been in his ears
the greater part of the day, though, as he now perceived, without
the fullest richness of expression of which it was capable. Still
less was he obliged to turn to discover to whom it was addressed,
for the few simple words I have quoted had been flung across the
narrowing interval of water, and a gentleman who had stepped to the
edge of the dock without our young man's observing him tossed back
an immediate reply.
"I got here by the three o'clock train. They told me in K Street
where you were, and I thought I'd come down and meet you."
"Charming attention!" said Pandora Day with the laugh that seemed
always to invite the whole of any company to partake in it; though
for some moments after this she and her interlocutor appeared to
continue the conversation only with their eyes. Meanwhile
Vogelstein's also were not idle. He looked at her visitor from head
to foot, and he was aware that she was quite unconscious of his own
proximity. The gentleman before him was tall, good-looking, well-
dressed; evidently he would stand well not only at Utica, but,
judging from the way he had planted himself on the dock, in any
position that circumstances might compel him to take up. He was
about forty years old; he had a black moustache and he seemed to
look at the world over some counter-like expanse on which he invited
it all warily and pleasantly to put down first its idea of the terms
of a transaction. He waved a gloved hand at Pandora as if, when she
exclaimed "Gracious, ain't they long!" to urge her to be patient.
She was patient several seconds and then asked him if he had any
news. He looked at her briefly, in silence, smiling, after which he
drew from his pocket a large letter with an official-looking seal
and shook it jocosely above his head. This was discreetly, covertly
done. No one but our young man appeared aware of how much was
taking place--and poor Count Otto mainly felt it in the air. The
boat was touching the wharf and the space between the pair
inconsiderable.
"Department of State?" Pandora very prettily and soundlessly mouthed
across at him.
"That's what they call it."
"Well, what country?"
"What's your opinion of the Dutch?" the gentleman asked for answer.
"Oh gracious!" cried Pandora.
"Well, are you going to wait for the return trip?" said the
gentleman.
Our silent sufferer turned away, and presently Mrs. Steuben and her
companion disembarked together. When this lady entered a carriage
with Miss Day the gentleman who had spoken to the girl followed
them; the others scattered, and Vogelstein, declining with thanks a
"lift" from Mrs. Bonnycastle, walked home alone and in some
intensity of meditation. Two days later he saw in a newspaper an
announcement that the President had offered the post of Minister to
Holland to Mr. D. F. Bellamy of Utica; and in the course of a month
he heard from Mrs. Steuben that Pandora, a thousand other duties
performed, had finally "got round" to the altar of her own nuptials.
He communicated this news to Mrs. Bonnycastle, who had not heard it
but who, shrieking at the queer face he showed her, met it with the
remark that there was now ground for a new induction as to the self-
made girl.
